We had the pleasure of attending, and sponsoring, the first ever Content Marketing Show. Hosted by Kelvin Newman, the brains behind Brighton SEO, this one-day conference was absolutely free and completely dedicated to content marketing.

If you didn’t get a chance to attend, fear not! Read on to find out exactly what was presented. If you did attend, we hope you nabbed one of our awesome cupcakes!

Philip took to the stage with an interesting point that we are all guilty of forgetting; content has been around for hundreds of years and what we are creating is nothing new.

By scrambling to rapidly fill our now HUGE empty ‘vessel’ with content that is compelling to both humans and machines we are making said content difficult to consume.

We must develop our content to:

– Communicate

– Influence

– AND be influenced

Content should be a dialogue, not a monologue.

“If society is ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start one. And if it isn’t, then almost no one can.”

Scott Adams

The content marketing world seems to be intent on finding a universal metric to measure the success of content, but there is no scalable facility to learn when influence takes place. Philip encouraged us to find our own unique way of measuring metrics, but warned that the age old paid, owned, earned taxonomy content does nothing but reinforce dated models. We were urged to pay close attention to our outcome metrics, all the way through a campaign, starting at the beginning. We were left to ponder Philip’s point on machined data and it’s potential growing influence.

Ian uses narrative to tie disparate events into a logical, comfortable order, but what makes a great narrative?

By linking your brand’s story with your customer’s story you can find the space between, and that is what makes a great narrative. Tell a powerful story about a product, based on your audience, and give it a personal element.

Using Burberry as an example, Ian left us with the following model:

– Set a narrative

– Populate content

– Engage customers to share

By telling your story but allowing your customer to also tell theirs you are encouraging them to engage.

BIG data plus BIG stories are Antony’s bag! He told us that storytelling can scale if we steer clear of dehumanising stories, telling stories as well as listening to them.

Antony told us that we must combine big data with content, using the 2012 elections as a case study he explained that during this time data ended up creating stories. The data collected gave great insight which in turn was turned into stories that were shared amongst US citizens.

Big Data + Content + Customer Experience

Antony told us that we must combine big data with content, this allows us to tell our users a story.

5 Things You Always Wanted to Know About Journalists but Were Afraid to Ask: Désiré Athow

Using his journalist background, Désiré gave us a little insight into a journalist’s mind. Explaining that journalists have been groomed to be wary of people who work in PR and marketing and we should bear this in mind in our outreach approaches.

Journalists are humans, and they have targets to hit. When approaching them we should bear in mind that 3 things determine what they produce:

- Affinities: what they’d like to write

– Priorities: what they choose to write

– Projects: what they have to write

Journalists are driven by passion and when you want to get the best out of them, interact with them! Attend networking events, talk to them via social media, RT them, and never, ever give them content littered with spelling mistakes and grammatical errors.

– Calendars: Review the events you attend and let people know where you’ll be.

– Presentations: If you’re presenting, record yourself practicing for an instant podcast. After your presentation, host it on a slideshare and if your presentation has been recorded at a conference, ask for a copy to host on your site. You can also have a follow up Q&A via Google Hangout.

– The Facts: Use your big data!

– Events: Get staff to live tweet from events as well create write-ups.

Stephen attended the content marketing show to give us a story of pure inspiration! He told us the story of how his love for coffee, a spotty 16-year-old ‘website’ creator, a coffee roaster, and very little budget has become a flourishing business. How does this relate to content marketing, you say? Because throughout their journey they have kept their goal and their love for coffee in mind, they provide exactly what it says on the tin.

Jochen was speaking for Textbroker, an SEO content creation service and took us through the briefing process and how we can get it right!

Work out overall goal of your text, as the following questions:

– Is its purpose to entertain or inform?

– Is it intended to optimise a site?

– Is it to drive people to buy a product?

– Name your target audience

– Describe the preferred style of writing

– List specific questions the text should answer

– Specify your SEO requirements

– Ask the author to contact you with questions

– Write a concise briefing

– Be friendly

– Ask your content provider for support

It’s SMM not S&M – Taking the Pain out of Social Media Monitoring: Andy Keetch

Size isn’t the only thing that matters

When it comes to monitoring social media we need to understand exactly what is successful and why. This can be done by tracking conversations over time and flagging spikes to learn the best times to release different types of content. Tracking the competition is also a great way of gaining insight.

Plan your reporting by doing the following:

– Defining clear objectives

– Reviewing traditional reporting

– What do execs want to see? The headlines

– Focus on results and what drives them

– Get your hands on data

– Be flexible and responsive

Andy told us that in order to ‘make sense of the noise’ we must get content out, gain feedback, and then refine it.